Good. Great, even. SPAA should hard counter CAS. Doubly so for SPAA that are completely incapable of contributing on the ground. That player is devoting their entire spawn to the act of preventing CAS from having free reign over the battlefield, and they should be able to do that conclusively.
This also requires enemy CAS planes to not change up their attacks after knowing a Strela is in the game. Primarly, by sticking to low altitude, high speed runs they can trivialize the Strela, or even knock it out if they know where it is. A friend of mine uses the SAAB 105G at this tier using exactly this tactic, and it works more often than it doesn’t.
Then there’s the elephant in the room, which is helicopters. At around this tier, helicopters start getting very high range missiles and/or fire and forget missiles, which combined with the Strela (along with every contrast seeker’s) inability to lock targets at long range and low altitude, you’re rendered entirely helpless. Can’t even try to shoot the missiles out of the air.
one thing i noticed pretty heavily when the Type-81C and Strela-10 where both added was that CAS became less of an annoyance and the ones that still did appear had to learn to adapt.
and having CAS being forced to think and watch their back more made the entire 9.0 to 10.0 BR bracket so much more fun to play as a result.
its genuinely stupid they even went up tbh, same with any stinger/manpads vehicle being above 9.3…
also the missile changes butchering things like Roland didn’t help.
I will get alot of flak from the CAS people for saying this and probably even get false flagged but honestly…
in the SPAA vs CAS balance debate the balance should always be done in favor of SPAA and the ground vehicles they are protecting, not the other way around.
The important thing I think is to realize that CAS at least was originally envisioned to prevent maps from locking up due to having sight lines occupied and so have matches become static because of dug in players being unable to be removed shutting down advances, which simplified QA testing, and allows for maps to be skewed in favor of one team or the other while still allowing the matchmaker to do its work(50% global win rate).
That’s why even GAB retains Airstrikes, and its not as if A2A loaded Aircraft can’t be spawned, and so why SPAA form the last ditch defenses, at least in my mind on top of CAS vs SPAA SP cost ratio being so heavily skewed, even for very light ordnance loads.
I personally think the way to solve things it to actually reduce the base SP cost of Aircraft and A2A ordnance / utility stores in order to make it so there is a reduced reliance on needing a meta SPAA / engagement range overmatch at a BR to make a functional line up, also a complete overhaul of how ordnance / custom loadouts are priced is needed. being able to fly out at MTOW w/ the best ordnance available should be rarer than it is.
Also SP cost reductions from spotting should only impact the cost of the base airframe / A2A missiles to increase the likelihood that CAP can be established and so is able to intercept CAS on the way in. Reducing the strength & flexibility of having a lineup with a meta vehicle with access to spotting.
Potentially adding some way to hotseat other classes of vehicles into the control of a SAM / Flak battery and adding AI defenses that they need to work their way though to expend ordnance and delay their appearance / give more warning could be a solution to existing ordnance employment methods, and encourage ordnance expenditure on non match critical tasks.
with fair reasoning, the Strela doesn’t deserve to be lower than 10.3.
Think of the fact that the Strela used to be able to face 8.3/8.7 vehicles with next-to-no countermeasures (not like they were useful against the Strela anyway).
If you unlocked the nuclear carrier as a spawn option at 8.3, a Strela could simply deny you the victory after all the hard work. Doesn’t seem fair, no?
Thanks to Gaijin for moving the Strela-10M2 to 10.3 now you can watch the enemy drones like a useless piece of sh*t not being able to do anything about it because 10.3 basically means 11.3 anyways so why bothering even…
Keep it going Gaijin I pay money to play 10.0 in peace to get matched with 11.3s because I basically can’t just match without a proper AA system.
Mate, you try getting a lock on much of anything greater than 3km away. For whatever reason, the ability for the Stella to lock past 3km is extremely hit and miss. And don’t even try to lock onto to helicopters. You’re wasting your time.
A photocontrast channel also has its own drawbacks to consider. The target can only be engaged during the day and in clear weather conditions, and the background behind the target must be uniform.
The use of an IR channel made this missile all-weather compatible, whilst the photocontrast channel provides the ability to capture a target and fire at it from long ranges, even exceeding the maximum flight range of the missile.
Photocontrast mode allows you to lock helicopters.
In game, you’ll have the ability to switch between three modes: photocontrast, infrared and automatic, which is enabled by default. In automatic mode, the seeker will perform a lock on in the most appropriate mode. However, you must take into account that after launch, it will not be possible to switch between modes. If the target was locked on in photocontrast mode, but evaded by going lower to the ground, then target tracking will fail and the missile will miss its mark.
Helicopters would be able to technically dodge the missile. Assuming they notice the launch.
